Militant organizations dispute big miners’ claims

MANILA, Philippines—Militant groups sneered at mining industry leaders on Saturday for claiming that mining, if conducted responsibly, could be the country’s big ticket out of poverty, and said the industry’s export orientation would never lead to national development.

“As long as the mining industry’s orientation serves the interests of foreign and local capital, Philippine mining will continue to be the main culprit in rural poverty, destructive, and anti-environment,”  Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas spokesperson Antonio Flores said in a statement.

Contrary to claims, mining has displaced farmers and caused “environmental havoc to farmlands and communities,” he said.

“The minerals extracted from our lands were only used for the benefit of big businesses like miners who also monopolize the telecom industry,” he said. “Mining industry leaders cum land grabbers and environmental plunderers should stop bragging of mining as a big ticket out of poverty.”

In a mining forum last Friday, Philex Mining chair Manuel V. Pangilinan, Chamber of Mines director Gerard Brimo and Wallace Business Forum’s Peter Wallace said that  responsible mining was the way to go but that the government should boost its capacity to regulate the industry.

“The solution is not to ban mining but to control it,” Wallace said.

Pangilinan said the enemy was poverty, not mining.

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said the benefits of mining are belied by its insignificant contribution to the national economy.

“Truth is, so long as the mining is geared toward exports and so long as the overall economy is dependent on foreign investments and imports, the mining industry will only serve the interests of private profits and will never lead to national development and industrialization,” he said.

Mining’s contribution to the economy has not breached the “1.5 percent barrier for a long time now,” Leo Jasareno of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau said.

Reyes said that mining remains an extractive industry that “does little to develop the economy’’ and that foreign mining firms and their local counterparts were merely interested in the export of the country’s mineral resources.

“Mining can only contribute to national development if it is part of a program for national industrialization. This would require a reorientation of the export-oriented, import-oriented, foreign investment-led, debt-and-remittance-driven economy,” he said.

To stop environmental degradation, Reyes said, mining “should be geared toward meeting people’s domestic needs rather than private profit margins and global market demands.’’

“The Philippine government must invest in the necessary industries to process our mineral wealth and make these serve further industrialization, including manufacturing and agricultural modernization,” he said.